too sacred to be slain, would be preserved and worshipped, the cult
giving rise to domestication and pastoral life, with totemism as a
probable factor. Earth, producing vegetation, was the fruitful mother;
but since the origin of agriculture is mainly due to women, the Earth
cult would be practised by them, as well as, later, that of vegetation
and corn spirits, all regarded as female. As men began to interest
themselves in agriculture, they would join in the female cults, probably
with the result of changing the sex of the spirits worshipped. An
Earth-god would take the place of the Earth-mother, or stand as her
consort or son. Vegetation and corn spirits would often become male,
though many spirits, even when they were exalted into divinities,
remained female.

With the growth of religion the vaguer spirits tended to become gods and
goddesses, and worshipful animals to become anthropomorphic divinities,
with the animals as their symbols, attendants, or victims. And as the
cult of vegetation spirits centred in the ritual of planting and sowing,
so the cult of the divinities of growth centred in great seasonal and
agricultural festivals, in which the key to the growth of Celtic
religion is to be found. But the migrating Celts, conquering new lands,
evolved divinities of war; and here the old female influence is still at
work, since many of these are female. In spite of possessing so many
local war-gods, the Celts were not merely men of war. Even the _equites_
engaged in war only when occasion arose, and agriculture as well as
pastoral industry was constantly practised, both in Gaul and Britain,
before the conquest.[4] In Ireland, the belief in the dependence of
fruitfulness upon the king, shows to what extent agriculture flourished
there.[5] Music, poetry, crafts, and trade gave rise to culture
divinities, perhaps evolved from gods of growth, since later myths
attributed to them both the origin of arts and crafts, and the